Author Archives: Michael Dennis

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About Michael Dennis

I live in Austin, TX, married, two kids, and starting a new church

Four Myths About God

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As I have spent time with people over the last 10 years I have seen a common misconception of who God is. Due to our life experiences, background, family, and religious influences it seems there are at least 4 myths of God:

Santa God: This is that God that we turn to when we are in trouble and we need him to come through for us. We will call out to him in desperation to get a house, car, spouse, job, etc. Or even call out to him on more serious matters like the health of a loved one, relational conflict, or financial strain. We crawl up into his giant Santa God lap and let our requests be made known. When we find ourselves about to get a speeding ticket we think to ourselves, “Santa God, if you let me go with a “warning” then I will be good for the rest of the year.”

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Lucy Read Pre K

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Dropped off the paper work today for the school. It isn’t 100% done but it is moving us in the right direction. Our hope is to solidify some dates in the summer for us to provide “previews” and work our way toward a weekly gathering in September.

The school has some limitations as a location but overall we are excited about the opportunity. It is the only Pre K school in AISD and primarily serves low income families.

Exponential 2009

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I am in a network of churches in Austin and our vision is to saturate the city of Austin with new churches. Our goal is to have 5 churches have a shot at starting in the city every year for the next 5 years before we re-evaluate.

Our plan was to go to Exponential (a conference for those interested in starting a new church) and make connections with those who might be interested in coming to Austin and partnering with us in our vision to saturate Austin.

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Meeting Jesus

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We live in Texas and if you grow up in Texas or live here long enough there are two things that happen: First, you become a big fan of Texas. Not necessarily the “Lone Star State” guy who puts stars up all over his house, but when you are surrounded by states like Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico it just leads to arrogance. After all we do have paved roads.

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Possible Meeting Location

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Tomorrow I am going to walk through one of our top locations. I had been hoping to find a spot that was free, already set up, provided chairs, audio, and refreshments, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Our hope is to start meeting in a home in May, and then once a month in our future location, and then start meeting weekly in September. Now the location we meet in once a month doesn’t have to be our weekly location, but it would help.

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Timeline

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September – December: Easiest mistake in starting a new church is to simply go with what is on the surface. Culture is deceptive and so are our emotions, intellect, and desires. Instead of making a quick decision we spent many weeks praying through neighborhoods, talking to people, spiritual conversations, and getting council as we waited for Jesus to show us where. We wanted to spend adequate time seeing what God sees before “doing”.

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Happy Easter Pt. 2

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As we approach this celebration there are two theological positions for us to reflect on:

Resurrection:  His resurrection is equally important and without the resurrection our eternal state is still encased in sin.  The penalty of sin has been satisfied through the cross but it is His resurrection that overcomes sin.  Scriptures teaches the wages of sin is death, but Jesus overcomes death, and as a result overcomes sin.  I was reading recently that few in the ancient world believed in the resurrection and although it is familiar to us, Christianity was born into a world where its central claim was known to be false.  

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Happy Easter Pt. 1

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As we approach the Easter Weekend there are two theological positions for us to reflect on:

Death:  His death is significant because it was through His death that God’s wrath toward sin is totally satisfied.  This goes all the way back to Genesis 2 when God speaks to Adam and tells him if he eats from the tree he shall surely die.  It is at the point of Adam’s disobedience that sin enters into human history and distorts all of creation and separates all of humanity from creator.  A Holy God has been offended.  

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Twitter? Tweet? Twat?

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I have heard about Twitter for the last year and immediately I thought it was just a spin off of Facebook and quickly dismissed it. I mean who could actually follow something called Twitter?

A few months ago I revisited Twitter thinking maybe I was too quick to dismiss it. I mean after all I thought the CD was a fad and we would quickly return to cassette. After signing up for an account and looking through the site I quickly deleted it.

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That Thing In The Park

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On May 2nd Violet Crown is going to host a festival in central Austin called “That Thing In The Park.” We came in contact with the organization through the Austin Dog Fair that we hosted a couple of weeks ago. They were so excited about the event they asked us to host a family activity at the festival.

As a team we tossed around some ideas and settled on face painting. Somehow one of the guys on the team already had 4-6 kits for face painting. Although this did bring some concerns about Nathan owning face painting kits I knew it was something that would be a lot of fun.

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Finances: Audio / Visual

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In the next month we will be taking step to purchase a considerable amount of audio and visual equipment. This is tough because it is expensive.

On one hand we don’t want to waste money but we don’t want to purchase low quality equipment that will break and burn out or purchase equipment that we will hopefully outgrow. Meaning a microphone and a boom box only gets you so far.

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Neighborhood Gatherings

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We have already started 3 neighborhood gatherings and hopefully start another in the next week! Neighborhood gatherings are simply getting our friends together to explore spiritual truths. It isn’t a formal process but something we encourage one another to initiate naturally so that we can create casual environments to explores spiritual truths with our friends.

Our hope is that neighborhood gatherings would take place throughout the city.